The ICC has announced that a series of meetings in Karachi concluded with agreement on the venues for the Champions Trophy later this year and fruitful discussions on television rights in India.

The Champions Trophy will take place between October 7 and November 5 in Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi, with the final in Mumbai. The seedings for the event will be determined by the ODI Rankings on April 1 and the match schedule will be determined after this date.

Ehsan Mani, the ICC president, said that a meeting on the topic of television rights in India had been very beneficial. CSI Octagon, Doordarshan, ESPN Star Sports, Sony Entertainment Television, TEN Sports, TWI and Zee were all given an opportunity to present to the meeting. These presentations were followed by a group discussion involving all of the delegates.

"It has been very helpful to draw together all of our Full Members and many of the major TV rights holders in international cricket to discuss this important issue," Mani told reporters. "We now have a much better understanding of the potential implications of the recent government directive regarding sports television rights in India.

"It was very important to open a wide-reaching dialogue on this issue and we will continue to monitor the issue along with all of these important stakeholders."

Mani and Malcolm Speed, the ICC chairman, also held private discussions with Peter Chingoka, the Zimbabwe Cricket chairman. Mani and Speed highlighted a number of areas of concern which they said they expected the interim board appointed by the Zimbabwe government to "urgently resolve in an open and transparent manner".

These include addressing allegations of financial mismanagement; ensuring disputes between players and the board are effectively addressed, and providing certainty for other ICC members that the strongest possible Zimbabwe cricket team will be able to fulfill future international commitments, especially the forthcoming tour of the West Indies due to commence in April.

Finally Delhi will get to host a major cricketing event. This means that I can hopefully go to watch a big international cricket tournament.

Also, Bangalore and Chennai should have also been chosen as venues considering that those stadiums are also considered one of the best with Chennai having the best crowds out of all stadiums in India.

This time, a new format has been chosen for the Champions trophy with the top 6 ODI teams getting in directly and the 7th and 8th teams coming via qualifiers which will include the 7th-10th ranked ODI teams.

Does foreign travel come into it? I know you can go direct to Mumbai and Delhi (and Kolkata I think) from England, but Bangalore? They would want as many fans as possible, so get them into the really big cities where they might splash out a bit more cash.

In the end, I think it's so utterly, incomprehensibly boring. There is so much context behind each innings of cricket that dissecting statistics into these small samples is just worthless. No-one has ever been faced with the same situation in which they come out to bat as someone else. Ever.